Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/153

Rh glimpses of his relations with humanity during these two years. Occasional visitors and friends have furnished many other memories. He recites his daily life from the early morning bath in the pond and the floor-scrubbing, with all the furniture moved out in the sunlight, to his quiet evening hours either spent at his lodge or in the town, from which he returned to enjoy the whippoorwill or owl, with "its truly Ben Jonsonian scream," or to listen to the distant whistle of the train. One of the most interesting phases of his Walden life was the interchange of visits with his family and friends. A relative who often spent weeks with the Thoreau family has recalled their custom to visit him on Saturday afternoons, carrying some delicacies of cookery which he always accepted with pleasure. Frequently, he came into town to have dinner or tea with his own household or at the homes of Emerson, Alcott, or Hosmer. At the latter hearth-side he spent Sunday evenings, returning the visit which the farmer and some of his family always paid Thoreau Sunday afternoons. Miss Jane Hosmer kindly narrated to me her memories of these visits when, as a child, she accompanied her father to the famous little lodge, scrupulously neat, where Thoreau sat at his desk, her father in an adjacent chair, and the children on